With the iPhone 3G release, mobile learning has been top-of-mind at Praxis Language. Internally, we have been using Woodill and Cunningham-Reid’s definition as a basis:
True mobile learning is personalized learning that unites the learner’s context with cloud computing using a mobile device.
As we evaluate how to improve our personalized learning system we have been comparing our approach against the above definition and contrasting our approach with other methods to learn foreign languages.
To support this analysis we further fleshed out a few definitions. First, in order to be sensitive to the learner’s context one must take into account their current proficiency level, learning goals, personal interests, and other personal/environmental contextual variables. A learning service needs to be able to be personalized to accomplish this. Specifically, it must have the ability to (i) identify student learning goals, (ii) remix lessons into customized courses that can set students on the pathway to these goals, (iii) provide one-to-one practice opportunities and (iv) facilitate personally-tailored, reinforcement opportunities. Second, ‘cloud computing using a mobile device’ not only represents the ability to access the Internet through an iPod, iPhone, PDA, laptop, etc, but also the social aspect, the community, that goes along with network connectivity.
Textbooks and CD-ROM’s are neither personalized, nor available on a networked device.
Offline classes can offer a degree of personalization, but are not available on a networked mobile device.
Software applications (e.g. iPhone 2.0 app’s), target language media (e.g. Youtube, Youku, etc.), and most language podcasts can be made available on networked mobile devices, but the learning is not personalized.
No existing language learning product currently fits the above description for mobile learning, that is, both personalized and accessible on a networked mobile device.
Customizable courses are the key to breaking down these barriers. Students, or their teachers, should be able to re-mix modular lessons into a course that is specifically designed to solve the student’s individual needs. SafariU is doing this with IT textbooks so why couldn’t the same model - for other subjects - be put online and made available for mobile devices?
The nature of podcasts makes them the ideal ‘plumbing’ to facilitate mobile learning. Being modular by design, podcast lessons could be re-mixed and put into personalized courses. Furthermore, podcasts rely on RSS distribution, which is channel agnostic and can equally distribute learning media to any networked device. Many language podcast publishers have forsaken this opportunity by adopting backward-looking, textbook-emulating linear curriculums.
Imagine a scenario where a student gets a 20-minute needs analysis with a counselor over a phone. The counselor identifies the student’s needs and then re-mixes an appropriate course from an archive of lessons. A family wanting to adopt a Chinese child - no problem. An expat who wants to be able to better work in his Chinese office environment - no problem. The student then starts a daily routine of (i) listening to podcasts on the way to work, (ii) taking 10 minutes in the morning to go onto the website and review the lesson they heard earlier, (iii) practising their new language with a co-worker or a teacher via Skype for 15 minutes at lunch and then (iv) reviewing the vocab they previously saved to the personal accounts by using flashcards on their iPhone on the trip home.
This is the mobile learning vision - that is both personalized and available on a networked mobile device - that our Guided products are trying to achieve.
